'Please, Miss Bethany, do not make any sound.'
'What… what?' She lay on the sand, a single blanket wrapped round her, beside the Land Rover's wheel.
'What my father says…'
'What does your father say?'
'My father says you should go.'
'Go?' Beth stammered. 'Go? Where to?'
'My father says you should go, and leave, drive away.'
'Yes, in the morning. More injections. When he can stand, ride, when he leaves…'
'Go, my father says, go now.'
'I made a promise,' Beth said bleakly. 'I gave my word. I cannot break my word.'
'My father says you should go.'
The boy slipped away. She heard the rustle of the camels' harnesses, their endless grinding chewing, and Bart's snores.
She felt small, frightened, and she knew by how far she had overreached herself. She had given her word, had made her promise.
She would not sleep again, would not dream again… There would be no happiness, no place of beauty, and she thought the simplicity of love was snatched.
Beth rolled in her blanket, swore, lay on her stomach, swore again, and beat her fists down against the sand.
He slept. He heard nothing, saw no movements. The great body of the Beautiful One, beside him and close to him, soothed his sleep.
Caleb slept because the pain had been beaten back, slept as the first light of dawn broke.
Chapter Nineteen
'Do you want morphine?'
'No.'
He had taken the injection in his arm. Caleb had lain on his back while the doctor had examined the leg wound, then replaced the lint dressing.
'You can have morphine either intravenously or by ampoule, for the pain.'
'I don't want morphine.'
'It's a free world.' The doctor smiled grimly. 'You take it or leave it.'
He did not want morphine because he thought the drug would cloud his mind. Back at home, in the old world that he sought to forget, there had been heroin addicts – the world came back more often to him, nestled with him, disturbed him – and in the summer they went down the canal towpath to the bridge that carried the rail link between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and they huddled in the gloom below the bridge's arches and injected themselves. To feed it, they stole, mugged and burgled. Going to school, going to the garage, going in the car to Birmingham for the mosque, he had seen them shambling, pale, their minds lost. He needed control, that day above all others. .
The doctor hovered over him, rubbing his eyes as if tiredness overwhelmed him. Caleb had slept. The sweat ran from the doctor's forehead and down into the stubble on his cheeks… The doctor had saved him, but had seen his face.
'Actually, I'm rather pleased with it.'
The low light seeped under the awning that swung and jerked from the growing restlessness of the hobbled camels. In an hour he and Rashid and Ghaffur would be gone, the ropes would be unfastened and the animals would be loaded, and they would move.
Morphine would derange his mind when he needed clarity.
'It's clean, there are no indications of infection. Oozing, that's expected, but no pus. It's what's going to happen next that you have to think about.'
Only the high-flying eye could find the vehicles, and then by chance. They might not be found for weeks, months, a year. If a storm came, at any time in the weeks or months, the contours of the dunes would shift and the vehicles would be buried – and the bodies.
'What you've got now is temporary. With clean dressings, it'll last three or four days, but then – if you've kept the infection out – you'll have to have it stitched tight. I'll be frank with you. The speed of your recovery, from trauma and dehydration, astonishes me. You've done well, or been lucky. But you will need a professional for the stitches.'
He would not bury the bodies. He would abandon them to rot in the sun and decay, and the clothes would degrade, and the flesh would be burned off the bones, but the first storm would bury them.
His strength would be safeguarded.
'I'm going to do you some extra dressings, and I'll leave eight Ampicillin syringes, enough for two days, and then the same in tablets – just swallow them. Twenty pills will keep you going for another five days. You'll need proper care in a week. I'll put out some morphine as well, and two syringes of Lignocaine anaesthetic if you have to take a penknife to the wound – I don't think you will. There's not much more I can do for you, but you've had my best effort.'
'Why?' Caleb asked.
The doctor giggled at him, then wiped the smile. 'I don't think we need to talk about that. I'll get it all ready and packaged up. No . sudden movements, no exertions, no walking unaided, and when you ride one of those bloody creatures you should keep the pace steady and slow. You, my friend, are a fragile petal.'
He watched the doctor walk away. There was, for a brief moment, a shiver of anger in him that his question had not been answered. A brief moment. It did not matter. He bent his body, levered his back up and looked out from under the awning. He saw the doctor head towards his vehicle. The woman was sitting against the wheel of the Land Rover, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head down on them, sitting against the wheel where he had laboured to dig out the sand. Beyond the guide, who was hunched down with his rifle laid across his lap, the boy stood with his head still and listened. He brushed his hand against the furred skin above the nose, and the Beautiful One nuzzled his arm. He caught her harness and dragged himself up. The pain shimmered through his body. He stood, his head against the awning's ceiling, used the launcher as a crutch, his hand tight on the grip stock.
He went, slow step by slow step, out from under the awning and towards the guide.
Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.
They sat on the bus. They were all blindfolded, and the chains were on their wrists and ankles and round their waists. He heard guards' voices from outside the bus windows and the hammering of construction workers and the churning of cement mixers. The sun beat on the bus roof, minutes passed.
Maybe there was shade from a tree or a building, but the guards outside the bus came nearer, and Caleb could listen. It was drawled, slow talk.
'Me, I wouldn't have let any of them out. Me, I'd have kept them all here, here for the shed.'
'Three weeks, so I heard, ready for when the tribunals start up.'
'Are we going to hang them, inject them or fry them in the shed?'
'Each of them's too good for these bastards.'
'Do that and there's no chance for regrets, kind of final… I mean, who says those jerks are innocent and should be sent home?'
T reckon the high and mighty said it, and as usual their talk is probable shit.'
The engine started up ami he no longer heard the voices. Birds sang, and . there was the waft of salted air through the open door of the bus, and he heard gates open in front of them, then scrape shut after them. On his knee was a little plastic bag, compliments of the Joint Task Force, Guantanamo.
It contained a change of underpants, fresh socks, a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a small tube of paste. He did not know that beside the gate now closed behind them was the big board that said, 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.'
They drove for the ferry and the airfield on the far side of the bay. He wanted nothing of them, would carry with him only the bracelet on his wrist that gave his name, Fawzi al-Ateh. As the bus bumped through more checkpoints, past more guards, he put the plastic bag on the bus floor and kicked it back under the seat. He wanted nothing of them but that they should be hurt, by his hand.
The fly came back, settled on her lip. Beth swiped at it again with savagery. She saw him.
With short stumbled strides, his weight on the weapon, he came clear of the shelter and headed out over the sand. His robe was hooked into his waist, the sun caught the whiteness of the new dressing and his shadow stretched away in front of him. The guide's boy had come to her, told her she should leave in the night, and she had spoken of her bloody promise. She should have gone in the night to the snoring, tossing Bartholomew, and told him, ordered him, to load up the big dose to burn away the dream. She had not had the courage. He reached the guide.